Starting Hardcore

I'm looking to start my first Hardcore character this weekend with the eventual goal of clearing it on Inferno, what class is recommended for this and any build to go with it would be very welcome. In fact, any advice whatsoever would be appreciated.

Always expect to die. If you think you can handle an area, you can't, go farm somewhere easier. The game isn't any different from softcore, but you need to start planning your builds to be immune to death instead of just able to clear an area. I'm farming act 1 mp1 on a WD with better gear than I farm mp3 on a softcore wizard.

For the most part, the hardcore auction house is pretty empty. My biggest advice is to get real good at trading if you want any items at level 60.

Barb/WD are generally the easiest to stay alive with, DH is by far the hardest. You can pull it off, but you also won't see many high level hardcore DHs if you check diabloprogress.

HC vs SC players will always be a different world. In my enormous experience with both kinds of players from Diablo to Diablo 3, the biggest striking difference has always been that, believe it or not, softcore characters do not care if they die. Even when they try hardcore, many of them who have played SC for a long time still do not seem to actually be consciously thinking about their mortality as they play. I have tried to get SC friends to play HC in D2 so many times, only to see them die at level 5 to the most hilarious stuff. In that game, most SC players didn't put much stock into vitality, preferring damage over life. Go across the river to HC world and every single stat point for every single character was in vitality. I was the same until I realized that no matter how tanky you are, you are not tanky enough.

And be prepared to die to BS, if you don't like it you shouldn't click the HC button. I was just reading a post on jsp about a paragon level 60 monk who died because he went link dead standing inside an arcane orb (and that's not all). Here's a guy who's put hundreds of hours into his character and could have probably made it to 100 without problems until the world screwed him over.

Lastly, if you just want to clear inferno for the achievement, it's not very difficult on mp0 and you shouldn't worry too much.

my first hc was a wd, which was pretty good but died to my stupidity
my 2nd one was a monk, which was even better and easier in a sense, could do monsterpower 1 pretty much as i hit 60 and cleared act 1

i dont have experience with other classes on hc, so from my pov monk with shield was the safest bet

Maybe I'll see you around, since I may be leveling another character. My WD died the other night Inferno Belial because I forgot to change my skills to do more damage and around 10% the whole screen was green and I blew up.